Emergent Research

EMERGENT RESEARCH is focused on better understanding the small business sector of the US and global economy.

Authors

The authors are Steve King and Carolyn Ockels. Steve and Carolyn are partners at Emergent Research and Senior Fellows at the Society for New Communications Research. Carolyn is leading the coworking study and Steve is a member of the project team.

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Emergent Research works with corporate, government and non-profit clients. When we reference organizations that have provided us funding in the last year we will note it.
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The demographic picture of the survey is interesting: 60 percent are women, 69 percent have degrees beyond high school, 75 percent didn’t grow up in a farm family, and 75 percent describe their farms as “sustainable.” (63 percent described their farms as “organic,” though due to the cost, many have not been certified as such by the USDA.)

These stats are dramatically different from the demographics of older farmers. They are mostly male, grew up in a farm family, tend to be high school educated and are much less likely to be running a sustainable or organic farm.

Young farmers also tend to operate small farms of less than 50 acres and are more involved in direct selling to consumers. Older farmers tend to have larger farms and use the traditional farm product distribution systems.

Young farmers are important because the average American farmer is old. According to the report:

Farmers over the age of 65 now outnumber farmers under 35 by a margin of six to one, and U.S. farmland is overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of older farmers.

It's not just young farmers who are recognizing the growing trend towards sustainable and organic farms and farm-to-table food. The tech startup Farmers Business Network just announced they raised an addition $110 million.

FBN is further building out a marketing product that promises to connect farmers with thousands of possible buyers who may want their specific specialty crops and who will pay a premium to know more about the source.

We believe the trends and shifts driving the increase in the number of small farms and young farmers will continue to grow.

July 27, 2017

The round was led by Softbank's Vision fund and also included investments by tech billionaires Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt.

The advantages of indoor farming are clear. By taking plants out of their outdoor environments and moving them inside to a controlled environment you can eliminate the problems associated with drought, pests, weeds and extreme weather.

This means the farms can produce more food in a smaller footprint than traditional outside farms.

They also can more easily use sensors and data analytics to optimize growing conditions.

This, combined with being indoors, means no pesticides or herbicides and reduces water requirements. The food is also grown close to population centers, so it's delivered fresher and with lower supply chain costs.

The major downside of indoor farming has historically been higher prices.

But the various indoor food startups are all claiming they can deliver their indoor food for the same cost, or even cheaper, than outdoor grown organic food.

Plenty has plenty of competition. Aerofarms, BrightFarms, Bowery Farming, Freight Farms, Green Sense Farms and many others are all developing indoor farming systems. Most of these have venture capital backing.

... the food industry and tech industry have started to intersect and companies like Google and Yahoo have major research projects related to the future of food. Many Sand Hill Road venture capitalists have placed major bets on various food technology and services.

Driving this interest is the size of the food industry (enormous) coupled with a growing interest in healthy eating.

Key quote from the KQED article:

"“More conscientious eating — meaning organic, sustainable and healthy food — is a huge trend, much bigger than many people realize,” said Ali Partovi, an investor in food companies. He says 91 percent of Walmart shoppers said in a 2014 survey that they would consider buying affordable organic food."

My favorite example from the article is Bitty Foods, which makes cricket-based flour and cookies. Their cricket-based chocolate cookies are shown above.

January 12, 2015

Experts predict that, in five years or so, the growth of the so-called ag sector will outpace today’s hottest technologies in terms of the number of startups and venture-capital investments.

“It’s going to be bigger than cloud software, it’s going to be bigger than Big Data, because everybody eats,” said Paul Matteucci, a partner with U.S. Venture Partners and founder of Feeding 10 Billion, a nonprofit center to help ag-tech entrepreneurs. “And it’s going to be completely entrepreneur-led.”

OK, so bigger than the cloud and Big Data may be a bit of hyperbole, at least in terms of the next 5 years. But Matteucci is right that everybody eats. We also agree that Ag-Tech is big and going to get a lot bigger.

Others also agree.

Farm 2050 is is a joint effort by a of diverse group of companies - including Google and DuPont - committed to advancing the future of food through supporting Ag-Tech entrepreneurs and startups.

Their particular interest is the application of robotics and data science to rethink and improve the way we seed, cultivate and harvest food. The partnership is providing capital, manufacturing facilities, testing equipment, and management mentorship to selected Ag-Tech startups.

This device watches rows of lettuce crops, comparing what it sees to millions of saved images. When it detects either a weed or a number of lettuce heads crowding each other out, the machine sprays fertilizer too potent for the target, but nourishing to the surrounding crops.

“We are not trying to make a meat alternative,” says Pat Brown, founder and chief executive of Impossible Foods. “We are making meat a better way.” ... That involves transforming “cheap, abundant biomass” into meat in the same way that a cow does – only without the cow.

This makes perfectly good sense.

We've traditionally used cows as our technology for converting plants into meat. Impossible Foods is replicating this process in a lab, eliminating the need for cows.

Not only is this potentially cheaper, but much better for the environment. Raising cows requires a lot of energy and water. Lab made meat would greatly reduce the use of both of these as well as eliminating the need for land for grazing.

Bugs are another potential food of the future. Canada's Next Millennium Farms is producing flour made out of crickets.

It’s chock-full of protein, has more iron than spinach, as much calcium as milk, all the amino acids, tons of omega 3, and tons of B12," he says. "So not only does it taste good, it’s also unbelievably healthy.

Like making meat in a lab, using bugs for food would also be environmentally friendlier than current food production methods.

If all of this sounds way to far off in the future, think again.

Hampton Creek Foods uses an industrial process to create an egg substitute out of yellow peas, eliminating the need for chickens. Their Just Mayo product is in stores today.

And for those of you who think eating is simply too time consuming and too much effort, Soylent sells a gooey drink that provides all the nutrients without the hassle of producing, preparing and eating a traditional meal.

The name is play on the 1970's movie Soylent Green, which was about a future world where food was scarce so an evil corporation creates a protein powder - called Soylent Green - made out of dead humans.

From a marketing perspective I'm not sure linking your food product to dead humans is such a great move. But they got a lot of press when they launched.

Given the central role food plays and its massive environmental impact, it's no surprise there's lot of innovation occurring in this industry. We cover much of this in our Small Farms category.

The goal is to help farmers get started by using the incubator model that has been successful in launching new businesses. Farmers get a quarter-acre of land, shared equipment, mentoring on business planning and marketing, and the opportunity to build a track record that will help them qualify for start-up loans for their own farms.

April 14, 2014

35% of all households in America, or 42 million households, are growing food at home or in a community garden, up 17% in five years

Largest increases in participation seen among younger households - up 63% to 13 million since 2008

2 million more households community gardening -- up 200% since 2008

Key quote on millennial gardeners (ages 18-34):

In 2008 there were 8 million millennial food gardeners. That figure rose to 13 million in 2013, an increase of 63%. Millennials also nearly doubled their spending on food gardening, from $632 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2013.

The gardening industry has certainly benefited from the growing interest in gardening (bad pun intended).

According to the Gardening Association, Americans spent $3.5 billion on food gardening in 2013 - up from $2.5 billion in 2008 - a 40% increase in five years.

People are trading the comfort of the suburbs for the hustle and bustle of the city. “Population growth in high-amenity areas like beaches, mountains, and skiing areas has slowed,” ... Historically, migration to scenic areas of the country has bolstered rural America’s population, but that influence is weakening.

This is clearly part of the much broader shift towards urbanization. But the decline in rural population is also driven in part by one of our favorite trends - the paradox of place.

This paradox is the Internet and connective technologies have resulted in place and location being both more and less important. Place is less important because high fidelity connective technologies allow people to communicate with anyone, anywhere.

But place has become more important as people and companies realize locating in cities leads to more interaction and innovation. This is why more jobs are moving to cities.

We don't expect the shift to cities to change anytime soon. Because of this, we don't expect rural populations to rebound over the next decade.

1) A uniquely deep and fulfilling experience that comes with growing your own food

2) Smarts- I have never met anyone who did not have some kind of “lightbulb go off”while they were food gardening

3) Better tasting ingredients for your cooking

4) A deeper understanding of health and nutrition

5) Natural beauty unfolding before your eyes, every day, year-round

6) Less trips to the store for the food that would go bad quickly in the fridge

7) Fresher air

We've been home farmers for years. Our best crop is lemons. We don't know why, but our 2 lemon trees produce hundreds of lemons and have multiple crops per year. We also have great luck with our kiwis and our limes do quite well.

The urban and home farming trends are exciting. It's not yet clear they will make the mainstream, but advances in aquaponics/hydroponics and companies like WindowFarms are making it much more likely urban and home farming will take off.